write your rep. If they voted "no", thank them profusely. If they voted "yes" write them and tell them you are not going to vote for them again or are seriously questioning your support of them. In the WNY area, Higgins and Reynolds (obviously) voted "yes". Slaughter, one of the few good ones left, voted "no".

That will help, but it is not nearly enough to change the tide that is swallowing the shores of our nation and world. What is bringing our country into a larger version of South Africa pre 1990's (a few rich whites at the top and everyone else really poor) is that we compound our natural tendency for competition with a non-regulated competitive system (capitalism). This combination of forces provides for exponential growth of the rich and fall of the poor. It will not stop until it collapses on itself (not so far off, possibly) or if people stop consuming from businesses that put the "rugged individual with privelege" ahead of the "rugged individuals w/o" .

In an age where the media refuses to air progressive news and the Internet is making letters to our reps, at times, meaningless, our only option is complete boycott of businesses, such as credit card companies, auto financing companies, Walmart and Walmart lites, companies that refuse unions, that refuse to offer healthcare, that use sheltered workshops in the US or sweatshops abroad (GAP and its subsidiaries...Old Navy, Disney and its subsidiaries, Time Warner and the 1/4 of the world it owns, Mobil, Exxon, etc.). Only through loss of profit will these guys relent to regulation and socialized healthcare, day care, education, prisons and human services, and universal housing and fair employment practices.

When we change how we purchase (local, organic, unionized, progressive, living wage institutions), we can change this corporate welfare world.